The Sad And The Heavy

Nine years and 362 days ago, I was exhausted from bartending a night shift and I fell asleep in the wee hours of September 11th, about an hour before everything changed forever.

I remember every second of that day, despite my lack of sleep and my bewilderment and shock. I remember the fear. My roommates went to work and I was alone and terrified. I remember the stupid things. I was too scared to shower, as if somehow getting clean was going to alter the course of events. I turned the TV on full-blast so I could hear it in the bathroom. The voices of Matt Lauer and Katie Couric gave me a false sense of control while I quickly rinsed myself.

I ran back and forth from my room to the balcony that overlooked the street below and the beach beyond. No one was outside on a gorgeous day. It was as if even the dogs and birds knew to not make noise. The wind was still. The waves were drowned out by the sound of fighter jets patrolling the coast.

The terror is what rushes back at me when I recall that day. I remember thinking that I would never feel that scared and out of control ever again. Unfortunately for me, that didn’t hold true. My own horrible loss has made me look at September 11th in a completely different way. I always knew that I’d watched people die that day, but before April 7th 2009, it never clicked that I had watched fathers, daughters, cousins, and spouses never come home. I couldn’t comprehend the pain, I was 22 and naive. It was sad, but I didn’t realize that it was SAD. I hadn’t lived enough, and I still, strangely, felt untouchable.

When Annabel is old enough to learn about September 11th, I wonder how she will process it. Its effects on our lives will certainly be felt throughout her lifetime, but will she be able to relate to it, to grasp the sheer magnitude of the awfulness since she didn’t live through it? I fear she may feel the same way about Madeline…sad and bummed but not exactly moved because she didn’t know her, even though Maddie’s passing will always be felt in our lives as well.

It’s all such sad, heavy stuff…and I’m glad that in three days, I don’t have to fumble for the words to explain any of this to Annie. How do you explain the unexplainable? I don’t know how. It’s just too hard.

37 Comments

That day I was a young(ish) mum – I had a 3 year old and a new born. It was a lovely afternoon – I was at my best friends house – we were drinking tea and chatting as I nursed. My husband called to say put the TV on. And we sat on that sofa, watching in horror. The little girls ran in and out of the room playing and giggling. My son continued to nurse. The children carried on as we were transfixed by the horrendous events.
A two months later my friend fell ill. She fought a dreadful autoimmune illness for a couple of years before she passed away.
My friend and that day are mixed in my head – I see towers burning and I think of Diane and all the innocence that we lost that year. I see her children – motherless teenagers – and I think of all the other children who lost parents. Overwhelming sadness.

I have so many conflicted feelings about 9/11. When everything else in the world was getting so much scarier, I was getting the phone call to let me know that my life was going to change forever. Just after the second plane crashed into the WTC, I learned I was pregnant with my daughter, H.

I was watching Canter Fitzgerald collapse when my doctor’s office called, wondering if someone I knew was inside. Blessedly, I learned the next morning he had schedule the day off… but he hasn’t been the same since that day. Feeling overjoyed that I was going to have a baby.

It was so conflicted and still is. I remember crying, watching people jump from the building in, I don’t know… an attempt to live? To make it go faster knowing they weren’t going to survive?

I wish I was still as blissfully naive as I was when I woke up on September 11.

I identify with this so completely. I felt awful and unsafe and full of grief on 9/11 but it wasn’t until I lost my own daughter that I truly understood the weight of what all of these families had lost. I watched the Children of 9/11 special on tv this week and balled my eyes out because it all came full circle and the pain was too much.

Barbi Emel says:

Our daughter was 11 months old at the time. I too was full of fear, fear of how I was going to protect her, also thinking what did I do bringing a child into this. I remember when they started talking about the chemical war stuff, I was one ready to buy plastic & duct tape to seal the house. Finally my husband said none of this is going to matter if it happens. I can say I’m worried about the 10 year anniversary. My daughter knows of it and I’m sure that’s part of history class she’ll have in the future. It is hard to explain. I told her where we all were, none of us were together, I was working, husband at Dr. 1 1/2 hours away and she was at the sitter. My boss didn’t seem worried, but we snuck to watch everything on TV in the boiler room. It was a devastating day, and all the stories afterwards, heartbreaking. Thanks for writing about this.

I was 22 at the time as well, about to get ready at my restaurant shift, when I got an IM saying to turn the tv on. I remember every second of that day…I was in DE at the time and my family was in CT. I was scared that I’d never see them again…all routes connecting us were closed. As each plane went down, further driving home that this was not a coincidence, this terror was intentional, my 22 year old self was so so scared. I felt the exact same way…like I needed to be connected to the tv to feel like I had any control…like if I turned it off, I’d be a lost, sitting duck. Of course I had no clue what the implications were of this tragedy…I”d never really even watched the news. Who knew?

Definitely a day that everyone remembers where they were – my daughter was 8 and had stayed home from school because she was sick…I remember we sat on the couch, glued to the the TV and watched the whole thing play out…I would have to change the channel at certain points when it got too graphic and she didn’t really understand what was going on, but she knew it was bad. Horrifying to watch in real life is what it was…I can only imagine actually being in New York.

I wonder if kids who were born after 9/11 will view the day like people my age view Pearl Harbor Day. We know it’s an important, sad day, be we can’t relate to it on a personal level in the same way that those who experienced the horror firsthand did.

MJP says:

The first thing I did was ask my mother who had lived through Pearl Harbor which was worse. She quickly said 911, it happened on US soil. It was important for me to get a perspective from someone who had experienced both.
I can never forget my feeling on that day. Being in California and up early for a 7 am meeting, I saw it as it happened. The towers fell during my meeting and when I got to work we were glued to TV and radio all day.

Kayla says:

I’ve never commented before, but I had to comment on your last paragraph. My grandma died before I was born. My mom and aunt were young, only 20 and 17, I guess my uncle was young too, only 22. My grandfather remarried, literally, weeks after I was born, so she’s the only grandma I know. My aunt also ended up dying young, at 28, so they changed the headstone and buried her and my grandma together, then when my grandfather passed, they put half his ashes over their grave.

I can totally relate to what you’re saying in the last paragraph. I was sad about my grandma, but never really understood the magnatude of her death on my mom. I was close to my aunt when she died (I was 8, she was like my big sister) and I was more affected by that, so when I’d go to the grave, I’d mourn her more than my grandma. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago, we were making a scrapbook for my aunt, working on her graduation pictures, and my mom wondered out loud where her mom was in the pictures. I looked through, all my great-aunts, my pap, my uncle, my dad, my mom, everyone was there but her. I suggested that she was one taking them, and then I realized that my aunt graduated in 1981, my grandma died in 1980. I told my mom that, and she just started sobbing. It was then I realized: I never think that my mom lost HER mom, and how hard that must be, because even as a now 52 year old woman, I’m sure over the last 31 years there’s a LOT my mom wanted to tell her, or have her here for and just been devastated that she wasn’t. It took seeing that from me to go from “sad and bummed” to “moved”.

Stacey says:

What a great post.
I think Annie will grieve Maddie appropriately when she’s of age. My father passed away when I was 5 and I have only a handful of memories of him… and I grieve him at least once a day and I’m 27. She will be “bummed” I’m sure when she’s younger as she missed out on a playmate, but the older she gets I’m sure she will truely miss Maddie in the way you hope. She will be mad and upset at being robbed of an older, wiser sister; someone to look up to for guidance, examples, clothes advice, a beautiful role-model in general. She’ll be frustrated at others for knowing Maddie’s stories and wondering why she wasn’t able to experience her.
I don’t think age has much to do with it; when you grow up missing a very important family link… you know. You know you’re “different” and will always long for just one day with that special someone. Just to learn their laugh, their smile or even the sound of their voice.
She’ll understand; believe me.

Jen says:

Oh man. My almost 10 year old son (he was born 8 weeks after 9/11) nailed me this morning at breakfast with questions. I kept it as factual as I could but it’s hard to tell how it affects him. I recently saw an ad for a new kids book about 9/11, I think I might look into that.

I was 21 when it happened and still in college at OU. People were surrounding the TVs in every lounge and we watched as the second tower was hit and then the first tower fell. They kept saying we were going to war, going to war… I had been married for 5 months and my husband was (still is) in the National Guard. Call me selfish, but I immediately was concerned about him having to be deployed. Classes were cancelled and I went to our apartment, turned on the news and watched until it was time to go to work. It was heart breaking. I remember being in too much shock to cry.
The Alan Jackson song that is about 9-11 still makes me tear up and I remember hearing it for the first time thinking, how am I going to explain this to my future children if they ever hear this song? My oldest is 7 and I don’t really think he knows and I’d like to keep it that way as long as possible.

I was in my office in Washington, DC that morning. We watched, in disbelief, as the events in NYC unfolded on a television in our conference room. It was almost too much to bear – I looked out the window at the Potomac on a gorgeous Fall day, not believing that much evil was possible in the world, praying that my friends in Manhattan were safe.

My office was in upper Georgetown, and from those windows we had a clear sightline of the flight path for National Airport, of the Potomac, and of the Pentagon; as I looked out and thought on the senselessness of it all, I saw the plane approach and disappear oddly behind the treeline, I thought little of it, almost don’t even remember it – planes flew that path all of the time. All day, every day.

Then I saw the mushroom cloud of fire erupt from the Pentagon, and my world fell 0ff of its axis like never before. My heart is still so heavy, all these years later.

It’s heartbreaking to feel fear for a city that 6 generations of family before you have called home, that’s in your blood, that you would argue and fight for, even die for if given the choice. But that day there was no choice, no argument, no fight. Just cruelty, then silence, and that’s the hardest part to bear when I think on it now.

Trisha says:

I was 23 and at a management conference for work in Orlando that September day. The instructor made an announcement just after our mid morning break of the news coming in from New York and DC and gave us the option to step outside and try to make phone calls to any family if need be.

My dad was a truck driver and he was in NYC to make a delivery on 9/10. I kept trying to call him and couldn’t get through to him. I finally spoke to my mom who gave me reassurance that dad had called and that he was already made his delivery and was out of NY and almost through NJ when he heard of the attacks over the radio. I felt such relief that my dad was alright.

I watched the news unfold once I got home and I cried and cried and cried, but being so young and naive, the sheer magnitude of what had happened didn’t click for me until 8/27/05. Not to say I wasn’t grieving with the nation all those years before ’05, I was deeply saddened and forever changed, but the wound for me was not as deep until ’05 when I lost my dad in a terrible trucking accident. That day changed me; or I should say it transformed me into a different person than who I am today.

Watching news coverage of a death now or driving by a fatal accident or reading a story of someone’s loss all give me goosebumps and I cry for these complete strangers and pray for their families to have strength, because now I get it. I understand that total feeling of emptiness and the numbness that comes with a death of someone you love deeply. I get what these families are going through in the hours after a loss and I am hurting with them.

My older daughters who are now 16 & 17 were so young when 9/11 happened but after their grandpa died, it clicked for them as well. We don’t talk about it much, but when we stop on a story about a 9/11 family or see coverage replays of that horrible day I look at them and they look at me, with tears welled up and it’s like the silence of those moments is enough to know that they totally get it.

Annie has such graceful and compassionate parents who understand deep loss and lived through the unfathomable loss of a child. I’m certain that you and Mike will instill such grace and compassion in her as well and even though she never met her big sister, Maddie’s kindred spirit will never be forgotten because a spark that bright never dims!

leanne says:

My husband and I were just discussing Sept. 11 last night wondering how our kids (7 and 3) would relate to this date, this event. Like someone above, he wondered if it would be similar to how we relate to Dec. 7, 1941. We understand the significance, but in some ways on a superficial level. It’s history, not really part of our personal story.

Last year my son had a number of questions about what happened on 9/11 and in Iraq and Afghanistan and why (I think the topic came up in school? I don’t remember now). Tough, tough questions that I did my best to answer.

My own experience on 9/11… I had flown home the day before after visiting my sister and her newborn daughter (while I was visiting, I had toyed with the idea of changing my flight to the 11th so that I could spend more time with them). I didn’t learn of the plane crashes until after I had gotten to work on the 11th. I saw an email from someone in my building alerting everyone to what was happening. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I briefly wondered if it was some cruel joke… until I found my colleagues hovering around a TV and watching the live coverage. And then I remembered that I hadn’t called my family to let them know that I had arrived home safely the day before, a phone call that I had always made whenever I arrived home. Always. I went back to my desk and called my sister. I felt horrible for needlessly worrying her. I spent the rest of the day just stunned by the crashes and the aftermath.

As for Annie, Maddie is part of her personal story, her family, even if she doesn’t know or understand it yet. And one way or another you will find the words you will need. You do have a way with words.

She’s hanging in there, she’s stable! It’s good. I only write about her when she says it’s OK, so sorry to leave you hanging! She’ll be visiting me in a few weeks so I’ll have more to say then (thanks for understanding!).

Lisa says:

hdj says:

We tell our daughter that bad people did a terrible thing to good people and our country, because they resent our way of life. And then we let her ask questions from there.

It’s kind of hard to explain how I felt. I was glued to the TV for two days and then I went into labor and I had my daughter that Friday. I was kind of consumed with something else. A reminder that in spite of senseless, incomprehensible tradgey, life does go on.

I was only 14 on 9/11 and I don’t think I fully grasped the magnitude when it was happening, even though I live only about 20 miles from the Pentagon. It took a few weeks for me to see how much it was affecting people. I have no idea how I would explain it to children.

I’m so sorry that you have to deal with explaining your loss of Maddie to her sister. My heart aches for you.

Meyli says:

I think Annie will grasp 9/11 and her sister’s death very differently. For her, 9/11 didn’t directly affect her family (I just mean no one she knew died in the attacks). Because of that, she’ll understand how horrible and awful they were, but those feelings will probably be a lot like the ones I have – I was simply too young to really feel anything when they happened. It’s all very ambiguous.
But her understanding of Maddie’s death will be different. They are sisters, sharing the same awesome parents. She will know SO MUCH about her sister – from you, so many pictures and videos, as well as hearing from her grandparents and other family. Because you live your lives with constant reminders of sweet Maddie (not pretending nothing ever happened, like some do when a loved one is gone), when Annie grows up, that will be part of her.

Our 7 year old (2nd grade) has had some questions about it already. Not sure how much they are talking at school or if it is just the ever present coverage this week.
It’s tough to explain to a kid. How much do you share? How much do you guide her away from some of the ugliness of that day? Do you tell her you were terrified? That the entire city of Chicago (downtown) was vacated and looked like a ghost town? That a friend and I watched the news for 3 days straight just periodically crying?
So far it’s a fine line. I let her guide the conversation and try to be as honest and simple as I can, and I’ve learned I’m ok with saying “I don’t know, honey.” when I don’t have an answer for those tough questions these bright kids come up with nowadays.

Tammy says:

Re: Annie and her thoughts/feelings about Maddie. Your pictures, videos and posts made so many of us strangers fall in love with Maddie and mourn her loss. I have to believe that Annie will feel the same.